Does time realy exist, yes or no?

[TiMiX]

Was talking to my dad the other day and we got on the subject of time, he thinks it does excist and i don't. Your thinking..... how can i think time doesn't excist? Its tricky to explane, but i'll give it ago

Thinking in a universal sence, with atons and electrons and all the things that go into building you and the chair your sitting on. All these things don't remember anything, thay have no awearness they just flot about and don't know what they just did anymore than thay know what there about to do.

We as humans have the abillity to remember, so to understand and explane to our selfs the diffrence from what we remember, to whats happening now we invented time, so we can measure and keep track of this. If we couldn't remember, there would be no time.

But we can remember, so time does exist... right?

Yes and no. In our consciouse world yes it does, but in the real world of atons and electons, the very things are consciousness are made of, no it doesn't.

Hope that made some sence I say some of the strange things a normal conversation with ya dad can turn in too

[Matthew]

Well it does exsist in a sense. Causality (the statement that cause preceds effect), basically states that it does exist. But because time can be manipulated it can exist, its not like its some static thing. Space itself changes time, affects it. So if it can be manipulated then it must exist.

[Littlemews]

Yea time does exist....
For example, when u move, the time move, but we u stop move(Dead), then time stop..same as the universe, if the planet rotating that mean there is time exist, but when the planet stop rotating(Black Hole), that mean the time stop...(because motion is no longer exist) I wonder why time stop when close to a Black Hole????? ><><

[Menikmati]

without time everything would be static. Nothing in this world would change, no decay, no birth, nothing =&#092;.

[TiMiX]

Well it would, but you wouldn&#39;t know it. For instance... people say its the "TIME" taken for something to travel from point A to B. If we didn&#39;t have a conscious memory to remember point A, and we are only seeing point B no time would have pasted because we never awear of it. So its only our abillity to remember things that time exicts, take that away and the time scale goes with it.

Another way of thinking about it is when you are asleep. When your sleeping you have no sence of time do you? Because you not conscious of it, or not remembering it. People that have been in a comma for 19 years wake up thinking its been only afew hours. Things still move and your only awear of it when you become conscious again, when waking up.

Tricky isn&#39;t it (o:

[Chook]

I totally agree with Menikmati.

Time = Rate of change (artificially concocted from the movements of the earth).

Even thinking takes "time". As Menikmati stated - no time = no movements, no thinking, everything static and solid. Which, of course, is unrealistic.

Therefore TIME has no character in itself - it has to be associated with change in other entities.

[Mef]

TiMix, what you are talking about is the senerio of "If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Just because certain things and beings are either aware of it or not, does not mean that time does not exist. You are going for the very simple explination, when a much more complicated one is called for. How do you explain Einstein&#39;s theory of relativity? Part of it states that time is effected by gravity.

To test the theory, NASA used the Paradox of the Twins with hydrogen maser clocks that lose no more than 1 second every 3 billion years.

One clock stayed on the ground, while the second was rocketed to 10,000 km (6,200 miles) where Earth&#39;s gravity has less than half the strength it has at sea level. As the probe slowed, stopped briefly at the apex, and started falling back, scientists could measure slight differences between the flight clock and the ground clock.

To a precision of 70 parts per million, Einstein was proven right, again.

http://www.southpole.com/headlines/y2000/a...may_1m.htm?list

If time does not exist and it is all just a perception by us thinking beings, then how do you explain this experiment?

[Matthew]

Time can be effected by gravity and acceleration, if something can be effected, wouldn&#39;t it be safe to assume it exists?

[rahuldandekar]

THe real question is whether time is just phsychological or real.

[TiMiX]

I have heard of the tree in the forest senerio, its not realy what i&#39;m getting at.

Ok... last try to explain whats in my head quite tricky isn&#39;t it.

Ok... time has no matter.... right. You can&#39;t see it you can&#39;t smell it, you can&#39;t touch it, it has no force or power.

Time dosn&#39;t power anything because it has no power its self, so why would things freeze with out it?

Do you think the atoms that build for instance, you and your pc screen have any awearness of any time?... i think no. :blink:

Einstein&#39;s General Theory of Relativity has been proven right. That time can traval faster or slower under certain situations. So lets say you take 2 clocks and apply the Theory which makes one loose "time", whats happening in an atom point of view?? the atoms moving slower in one clock making it loose "time" on its face... right? Why? because of time? how come if time has no force or power to effect it.
How can somthing with no mass (time), effect something with mass (atom) shorly theres something i&#39;m missing here, because that makes no sence at all to me at all :blink:
There must be a real force at work, You ever heard of a time powerd clock?.... no

Take time travel, how can you make every atom jump back to where it was say 500 years ago&#33; you can&#39;t.

You nor an atam has the faintest idea where it used to be 500 years ago, or where it was just 2 seconds ago, because the universe isn&#39;t recording any of this, theres no time scale out there.

Anyway i&#39;m not saying that i think i&#39;m right, i&#39;v just come across something that dosn&#39;t make sence in my eyes and just giving my thorghts :blink:

[Matthew]

Take time travel, how can you make every atom jump back to where it was say 500 years ago&#33; you can&#39;t.

Thats an assumption.

[TiMiX]

what isn&#39;t?

[exAstro]

I&#39;ve read Julian Barbour&#39;s "The End of Time" three times (;-)) and still have not appreciated his point(s). In a non-scientific vein, I believe that time is certainly a subjective "quantity" and not an absolute. But ... we&#39;ll have to wait and see, won&#39;t we.

Happy new year- and may dark skys bless you.

[TheThorn]

According to John Archibald Wheeler,

If time didn&#39;t exist, then everything would happen at once.

Just a sec... on second thought, you may have a point there....

Take care.

[exAstro]

Mr Thorn, et al.-

Wheeler&#39;s autobio.- "Geons.... " is a classic already. And- he still lives&#33; How appropriate. I only wish that I could have seen him at work.

Happy new year&#33;

[rahuldandekar]

Time isn&#39;t a quantity independent of Space. When the Space-time block is cut into different slices, A property of each slide can Identify the time of it. (see &#39;space-time for this subject).

So, spce and time don&#39;t exist independently.

[Rene]

I also believe time does not exist. Imagine a spreadsheet or database that could store the 4 cooridnates of every particle or object in the universe. x,y, z and the fourth time T. The database would be called U. This is how most people perceive the universe. looking at the values of x,y,z and t for each object, the values would be constantly changing.

Most people have confused the universe with time. There is no time passing, just existance. The universe exists and things move within it. There is not time passing, just the measurement of objects moving with vibrations of a quartz crystal or a clock hand moving to measure them. One object measuring another&#39;s movement with the movement of itself.

So, lets redefine Time as actually Existance. So, move the t in the database to the U as the actual database which is static and everything else in the database still changes due to its constantly changing physical positions within U or T.

[Guest_Adrian]

Time, ummm. Possibly the easiest way to define time is to consider the passage of light across the universe. Even our own sun, being 93 million miles away, takes approximately 8.3 minutes to reach us, and in the most distant reaches of the cosmos it is possible to see the universe as it was almost 12 billion years ago.
Our lives are too short to fully appreciate the vast age of our universe, but light, if its source is powerful enough is able to exploit the properties of time to the limits of infinitude.
The Universe itself is expanding, and if it were possible to measure this expansion at all points, it would probably be near light speed.
Don’t measure time by how we perceive, but by how the universe itself exploits it.
All life in the universe exists on the edge of time; what we call the present, and the present is like the crest of a wave moving ever onward into the future.
Like the massive flow of photons forever criss-crossing the universe, we are inescapable caught in the flow of linier time.

[TiMiX]

There is no time passing, just existance. The universe exists and things move within it. There is not time passing, just the measurement of objects moving with vibrations of a quartz crystal or a clock hand moving to measure them.

Spot on, makes alot more sence than mine

Our lives are too short to fully appreciate the vast age of our universe

How i see it is the universe isn&#39;t any older then it was when it was first created, its

just changed.

I feel once peaple start to look past the illusion of time, and start asking them

selfs, whats actuly effecting things then if it isn&#39;t time. We will be a big step closer

to understanding and solving things that we now think are impossible.

[damienpaul]

thats an interesting way of putting it

[Kevin]

Originally posted by Rene@Jan 2 2004, 08:17 PM
I also believe time does not exist. Imagine a spreadsheet or database that could store the 4 cooridnates of every particle or object in the universe. x,y, z and the fourth time T. The database would be called U. This is how most people perceive the universe. looking at the values of x,y,z and t for each object, the values would be constantly changing.

Most people have confused the universe with time. There is no time passing, just existance. The universe exists and things move within it. There is not time passing, just the measurement of objects moving with vibrations of a quartz crystal or a clock hand moving to measure them. One object measuring another&#39;s movement with the movement of itself.

So, lets redefine Time as actually Existance. So, move the t in the database to the U as the actual database which is static and everything else in the database still changes due to its constantly changing physical positions within U or T.

What most of you fail to understand is the meaning of &#39;dimensions&#39;.

A &#39;dimension&#39; is not a THING, it is not a box or some other type of place. A dimension is a factor of measuring. If I can &#39;measure&#39; a certain aspect of something, then it is a &#39;dimension&#39; of that thing.

There are four &#39;basic&#39; dimensions (the lowest distilled aspects which we can measure) - Height, Width, Length (otherwise known as space) and the rate of change (time). Put them both together and you get &#39;space-time&#39;. These four dimensions are inherient to ALL things, everything that is contained within our universe must have a minimum of these four dimensions.

One of the previous posts was correct, in that if there was no time, then there would be no change. Meaning, electrons wouldn&#39;t spin around an atom, atom&#39;s wouldn&#39;t move, there would be no electromagnetic energy, etc. There would be no radiation, no light, nothing. The entire universe would be static. And as such, there would be no life, no memory, no thought, etc. It would all be black, even to an outside observer, since there would be no means of light or other type of detectable radiation of energy to validate the existence of our universe.

Your metaphorical bunk on &#39;existence&#39; is just that... bunk. Existence is the ability of something to occupy space. That&#39;s it. Metaphorical awareness of your own existence means nothing. You would exist with or without your awareness. Something can exist without time, as it can still occupy space. However, it can not CHANGE without time, and as a result, it especially could not validate it&#39;s own existence because measuring something would require change to do so....ie. knowledge could not exist without time, since it would be a change in your pool of thought located in your brain.

What Einstien proved is that TIME is a measure of the RATE of change, not the measure of change itself. This means that we aren&#39;t measuring the discrete steps of the originality of change, but the differences in the changes relative to each other.

This is why the RATE of CHANGE (aka Time) can be warped, modified, stopped, restarted, etc. For instance, when I bring something down to ABSOLUTE ZERO, I stop time for that thing. Even though absolute change exists outside of it, and occurs regardless, the rate of change for that item at Absolute Zero is ZERO and thus from it&#39;s relative expression, time has stopped.

Einstien also explained why the rate of change of something is modified by speed via his famous equation E=mc^2. E=Energy, m=Mass, c=the speed of light (aka, the rate of change of something with little to no mass). So via his equation, he shows the direct relation to the rate of change, to mass, to energy. Stopping time means bringing something&#39;s total Energy to zero, Moving faster than the speed of light (relative to that thing) would require infinte Energy/mass which is impossible. This equation does NOT state that it is impossible to go FASTER than the speed of light. It is just impossible to go faster than the speed of light relative to YOURSELF, not to an outside observer. The outside observer would see time for you slow in relation to provide the equivilancy to the observed increase in Energy. Basically, you trade one for the other, and vice versa. So to them, you could possibly go faster than the speed of light that they measure, just not the speed of light you measure yourself.

This also explains why it is difficult (if not impossible) to *really* go backwards in time. This is due to the nature of the fact that the way we perceive time, is relative, since we do not have an absolute measure of time, we can not expressedly state that we are actually going back in it. Since time=change, to go backwards in time would require changing everything in reverse order until that point. However, relatively speaking, time has continued to move forward, we have just reversed the changes that occured previously, thus moving us forward in time still, but relatively backwards in change. This is kind of a difficult concept to grasp via text, and would be much easier to explain in pictures.

But here goes...

-------- Absolute Change--------------------------------------&#62;
Changes to something:

---&#62; Relative Time--&#62;
A->B->C->D->E
(reversing change)
****************-<------Relative Time<-----<----------
****************E->D->C->B->A

*Note: Ignore the stars (*), I have to put something there or else the website will remove the leading whitespace and screw up the picture.

This is where the &#39;splinter&#39; theory of time comes into play. Since time is a measure of the rate of change, and since the rate of something can never be negative (how would you slow something down less than zero?) Resolving a relative change in time would not preclude a change to absolute time. Thus, if you changed relative time, to go back and try to kill your grandfather, you would still exist, since you would be necessary to go back and change time, in addition to being required to be there to kill your grandfather. It&#39;s more of a self serving paradox.

What Guest_Adrian fails to realize is that existence and time are two different things. Time can not exist without space, but space can exist without time.

Time must exist as long as change exists, as Time is merely a relavent measure of the rate of something changing.

Hopefully this long and drawn out diatrabe will help.

[damienpaul]

what a great long and drawn out diatribe&#33;&#33; awesome - it makes sense relatively speaking

[Glyn]

Hi, sorry to intrude. I thought one of you may help me. My watch has stopped. Does anyone have the right time?

[Sp1ke]

Maybe. Depends where you are and how fast you&#39;re moving

[Guest_Mike]

Time doesn&#39;t exist in the sense that it is a physical entity, but time can indeed be considered the fourth dimension. I&#39;m sure you have no trouble believing the three spatial dimensions exist, even though you can&#39;t point to the dimensions and say, "look here is a dimension of space." They simply don&#39;t exist in that sense, just like time.

By your reasoning one could also say that distance is a man-made concept and doesn&#39;t really "exist," when in fact we know it does.

All units of time we use are man-made but time itself is not, just as the meter and foot are man-made units of space, but space itself is not just something conceived in the mind.

[Sp1ke]

There is a difference, though, between the spatial dimensions and the temporal dimension. We can freely move backwards and forwards in each of the spatial dimensions but time is a one-way trip. We can&#39;t even alter the speed we travel through time (except from the perspective of an external observer).

[Chook]

Congratulations to Kevin - a most lucid explanation.

[Chook]

Quote Kevin:
"... RATE of CHANGE (aka Time) can be warped, modified, stopped, restarted, etc. For instance, when I bring something down to ABSOLUTE ZERO, I stop time for that thing. Even though absolute change exists outside of it, and occurs regardless, the rate of change for that item at Absolute Zero is ZERO and thus from it&#39;s relative expression, time has stopped."

You have made a very interesting point, Kevin, but I&#39;m not sure, after contemplation, that I understand. So help me please ...

If I understand what you are explaining - "time" (aka RATE OF CHANGE) is different for everything relative to its "change". Eg the something with ABSOLUTE ZERO temperature has "stopped time" ... yet the environment around it continues to age.

But consider an animate object eg a SLOTH with a "low metabolic rate" compared to a "SHREW" with a high metabolic rate. Are you saying that TIME is different for them both (because of their different "rate of changes"? And a different time for their environment around them which, itself, consists of many components of varying "rates of change".

See my confusion? :blink:

[Sp1ke]

I think there are two aspects to time here.

There&#39;s the measurement of rate of change. So if something is totally unchanging, then time does not pass for it since there is nothing to measure. I&#39;m not sure whether this really is an achievable state - for something at absolute zero, it might not be changing but its state is created by an external cooling mechanism so it is still subject to the passage of time because it will change if the external mechanism stops working. Time is only stopped when everything in the universe is at absolute zero.

Secondly, there&#39;s the perception of time. It is possible that a sloth perceives time in a slower way than a shrew and so, for example, the sun would appear to move across the sky faster for the sloth. But that is a perception rather than a measurement. The sun itself does not change its speed.

[all_isone]

also been questioning the relative ideaof time.

* i dont believe &#39;time&#39; being related/justified by &#39;change&#39;
there can be very rapid changes in &#39;no time&#39;
and no changes at all in a very long strech of &#39;time&#39;

time is a concept that is been introduced mainly in relation with
earth&#39;s 24 &#39;hours&#39; move around itself, its a very relative concept
(hence &#39;sols&#39; discribed for Martian days and its relative relation to &#39;time&#39; )